A TV presenter at a Russian state-owned news agency quit his job and launched a scathing attack on Vladimir Putin ’s “insane” leadership, risking Moscow’s wrath.
Gleb Irisov, 31, said many of his now ex-colleagues oppose the war in Ukraine, leading to action by the FSB security service.
Irisov, who had been military correspondent at TASS, is also a former military translator who served in Syria and realised the horrors when several of his former comrades died on the first day of the illegal invasion.
Speaking out against the Russian President, he accused him of “sending the army to slaughter”.
Claiming Russians are fed “bulls*** about Putin’s war, he said: “I learned that the situation was simply horrific.
“The leadership became so insane that it simply threw its own army for slaughter.
“Officers, contract [soldiers], conscripts.”
“Putin and [defence minister Sergei] Shoigu threw their poorly prepared, badly-equipped army to slaughter…in a full-scale military conflict in Europe.
“Corruption has gone from being a local phenomenon to a global one under Shoigu.
“It starts from the very bottom: at the level of the brigade, the unit - when the commander filches millions in bonuses from the budget.”
He added his choices had been to stay at TASS as part of a propaganda machine - or face accusations of treachery for opposing the Kremlin.
He explained: “To become a war criminal or against the state - the choice was obvious for me.”
Last week TV presenter Liliya Gildeyeva quit Gazprom-Media’s NTV channel, claiming many journalists putting out Putin’s propaganda disagree with the war.
Leaving with her daughter into exile, she said: “Most of them do not sympathise at all with what is happening now - all this hell, horror.
“I wake up every morning with a thought that this cannot be true.
“This is still some kind of delayed effect of the trauma, because this shock is getting deeper and deeper.
When asked what she would say to Ukrainian mothers for the pain inflicted by the war, she replied: "I would say: ‘Forgive us.’”
It comes as the Russian army admitted it has lost almost 10,000 soldiers in less than a month since the invasion of Ukraine , a pro-Kremlin newspaper revealed before quickly scrubbing the figures.
Vladimir Putin ’s apparent aims of a quick toppling of the Ukraine government with a “special military operation” on February 24 have not gone to plan due to stubborn resistance from their neighbours.
So far no major city has fallen to the Russian army and due to the slowness of the invasion Putin’s forces have taken to heavy shelling which is in turn causing a heavy loss of life.
Thousands of Ukrainians have died but the Russians have also suffered heavy losses against an opponent who is heavily motivated to defend its homeland.
Officially the Kremlin had claimed that there had been 498 Russian deaths on March 2 but now it appears to be as high as 9,861, with a further 16,153 injured.
